Historical Walking Tour of Wollongong

The platform buildings date from 1887 and 1923, with refreshment rooms added in 1890 and 1926. The register calls it the most substantial and earliest station on this stretch of the Illawarra line, because work on the section from Scarborough to Bombo began here, with materials shipped from Sydney to Wollongong in 1887. The brick platform buildings are valued as fine examples of station architecture, and the refreshment room additions are a rare survival. SHR 01289.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Regent Theatre Wollongong

Marion Hall Best, one of Australia's leading modernist interior designers, created the foyer and mezzanine, and the register says they keep one of the few intact examples of her signature glazed paintwork. Magoffin designed the Art Deco facade in the mid 1930s, though the cinema was not built until the mid 1950s. It still has its wide screen and big picture-palace auditorium, which is rare, and it marks the career of Herbert Wyndham Jones, who managed cinemas across the Illawarra. SHR 01735.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as St Michael's Cathedral, Wollongong

Blacket's design for St Michael's has some unusual features and is among the earliest works where he showed his own architectural confidence. The register says the church is largely intact as built, with much of the interior as Blacket envisioned it, and values it as a rare, high-quality Gothic parish church that reflects the optimism of the local community in 1858. The prominent site shows the Church of England's early lead in the town, and the cathedral sits in the most prominent historic group of buildings in Wollongong. SHR 00602.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Postal services have run in Wollongong since 1832, and this building reflects the needs of a growing population late in the nineteenth century. The register describes it as one of the last post offices designed by the Colonial Architect's Office under James Barnet, who designed many NSW post offices between 1865 and 1890, and a notable example of the Victorian Free Classical style. It is a prominent civic building in the Crown Street streetscape and part of the community's sense of place. SHR 01616.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

The register records Little Milton as thought to be the earliest surviving cottage in the urban section of Wollongong, with the first part of the house complex built in the 1850s. The listing rests on a 1983 report to the Heritage Council, and the record says little more. SHR 00272.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

The building is a mid nineteenth century government building that was expanded in 1882, when a second storey and a facade designed by Colonial Architect James Barnet were added. It keeps some Classical and Italianate detail inside and out, and a rare intact air raid shelter from World War II. The register values it as a typical purpose-built regional telegraph office and as one of many historic buildings reused as a local history museum. SHR 01940.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Wollongong Harbour

Belmore Basin, the block-walled harbour, is the oldest and most intact of its kind in NSW and was built with convict labour as the first port in the Illawarra. The precinct also holds the 1872 Breakwater lighthouse, one of only two wrought iron lighthouses in the state, the 1858 Old Court House, the remains of the 1891 Flagstaff Hill Fort and the 1893 Smiths Hill Fort, and ocean baths dating from c.1871. SHR 01823.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as North Wollongong Beach

The register treats North Beach as a record of how surfing and beach culture shaped the coast in the twentieth century, especially between the wars. The Bathing Pavilion and Kiosk are intact Interwar Functionalist buildings, and the surf club dates from the 1930s. The beach hosted state surf life saving championships in 1950, 1952, 1966 and 1990, and the listing recalls Wollongong's reputation as the Brighton of the South. A tramway cutting recalls the coal carried to the harbour. SHR 01737.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory